


In Summer

by pixeletter



Series: Brevity [3]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixeletter/pseuds/pixeletter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daiki thinks the tree near their house is alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Summer

Can you keep a secret?

Well, it’s just that Daiki thinks the tree near their house is alive.

Inside their home-library, the tree could only be seen from its westward facing window. The time when he’d go home from the dorms is the only time he’d get to see the said tree and that’s during school breaks. During summer vacation though, his mom would have the library’s window blinds down to protect the books from exposure to intense sunlight.

So how did Daiki see the tree in the first place?

Because Daiki is the only one who can see it.

He doesn’t know this of course. But _you_ do.

Moreover, Daiki isn’t the type to mull over trees. Trees, he thinks, are for gardeners. And what a _fine_ _gardener_ the tree has.

Her name is Satsuki. And she’s friendliest person Daiki has ever met on his entire life. A bit crazy but she’s also very nice. When not playing basketball, Daiki doesn't like to be outside very much but he goes out anyway to go see the tree. Because Satsuki is always there, too. He can’t remember when it started but somehow, this gave him a reason to look forward to going home every summer. Not because he misses his parents, but because he misses his friend.

On that instant, Daiki’s world narrowed into three—Satsuki, _their_ tree and him. Five years has passed since then.

“Five years, huh?” Satsuki asks him, voice soft like a song.

Daiki smirks. “Yep. And I’d be graduating soon from High school. You should come, you know. I’d even introduce you to my parents.”

Satsuki shifts on where she stands, leaning her back against the tree’s trunk. She stays like that for a time and Daiki has to wonder what was it about the things he said that made Satsuki do _that_ face.

“What face?” Satsuki questions, locking eyes with him.

Daiki shrugs. “ _That_ face.” He drawls. “Like you’re about to cry.”

Satsuki would have looked away, if she could—a friend being concerned over her—so right, yet somehow horribly wrong. Because she knows Daiki is young and honest but he probably doesn't mean it.

One day Daiki had a fight with his parents and he ran out. He ran towards the tree, his temporary haven, and as expected Satsuki is there. She always is. Like she never even left. Daiki then became too busy complaining about how he hates his home. Satsuki tells him that he really shouldn’t be mad. “Parents don't want their children to make the same mistakes as they did.” She tells him, “Trying their best to make sure their kids are on a safe track, saying annoying words...” Her eyes glaze and she smiles the sort of smile that never reaches her eyes. It was the end of their conversation.

The next day, Daiki told Satsuki that he would run away from home. For real.

“It just gets pretty suffocating.” He tells him. “At this rate we’ll all end up being unhappy.”

Satsuki tells him nothing. Daiki doesn’t mind.

“So I guess… this will be my last summer vacation in here.” He continues. “I won’t come back.” His words are final. They became such important person to each other that oftentimes, many words aren’t necessary to explain things such as a final farewell.

In his way, Daiki has been terribly selfish. But his parents like him, Satsuki likes him and he likes himself. He doesn’t think he has done anything _seriously_ wrong. It’s just that… things change. The world is so big, and he had just found what he wants—to grow up. But you see, Daiki is so single minded. Unfortunately, this same single mindedness hurts the people he cares about.

Then it happened on the day he tried to run away.

A blink of an eye and their tree started to fade.

And so as Satsuki.

“But a person couldn’t fade, right?” He asks.

“Seasons could.” Satsuki speaks, “And for a while, I became your summer.”

The illusion snaps. There was never a tree.

“‘ _I won’t come back’._ It’s like the magic word, Daiki.” Satsuki continues. “If you leave, there will no more summer. For me, at least.”

“I don’t understand…”

What can be seen on their home-library’s window wasn’t a tree at all.  It’s a grave.

“It’s okay if you don’t. This just happens to be your last summer with me, _little brother_.”

How could Daiki forget?

It’s his stillborn big sister’s tomb—a nameless rock on a grassy field, surrounded by pink flowers during the spring and cold dead by the winter. His parents rarely mentions it to him. They told him it was just a land they’ve bought out of blue, because his mother loves flowers, but Daiki knows that wasn’t the case. It was for his brother who was never born.

When he was a child and after having learned that his supposed big sister was in there for the first time, Daiki attempted to plant a tree in that place so his big sister wouldn’t be _lonely_. Regrettably, it never grew.

“I would have been their child,” says Satsuki, and looked at Daiki with eyes that hated and loved him, all at once. “You don’t even know what that means, and suddenly you’re everything I ever wanted to be.” Satsuki tells him then fades into nothingness.

Daiki smiles bitterly and thinks that he doesn’t want autumn to come; because that would mean that the time is moving. And soon, there will another summer but there will no more Satsuki waiting for him under that tree. And even if he doesn’t come back on this place, it doesn’t mean that he’d forget. The change of seasons will be a constant reminder of what he did that summer. Of what his stupid _farewell_ did to that _person_. That it turns out the tree he planted for his sister grew after all. In his way, Daiki has, indeed, been terribly selfish.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on asianfanfics.  
> Comments will be greatly appreciated :)


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